The other day, I wrote about some of the smart bets that the Edmonton Oilers have been making on complementary players like Zack Kassian and Patrick Maroon, both of whom also add welcome elements of size and toughness to the team.

It’s only fair at this point to talk about a somewhat similar bet which hasn’t worked out nearly so well.

When Lauri Korpikoski was acquired in the summer he checked some of the same boxes that Maroon and Kassian have.

Like those players, Korpikoski is a complementary winger with a history of offence; he had two 15-plus goal/35-plus point seasons with the Coyotes a few years back. His $2.5 million cap hit is very reasonable for a top-nine NHL forward and falls in the same ballpark as the Maroon/Kassian deals. He’s not as big, but at 6’1”, 193 pounds he isn’t small and furthermore he plays a speedy, aggressive style of hockey game; he’s greasy in the complimentary sense of the word.

The key difference between Korpikoski and those other wingers isn’t size, it’s ability. When the trade went down, we were skeptical here at Cult of Hockey that it was a good idea because the Finnish winger’s underlying numbers were so poor. After citing those lousy numbers, we panned the deal:

At first blush, it’s hard to see how this trade makes the Oilers a better team. They do get a little younger and a little cheaper and a little more physical by adding Korpikoski. But they also move a solid defensive centre for a winger with a mediocre two-way record, don’t add much more scoring, and add another year of commitment to an expensive bottom-six player. Presumably we’ll have a better idea of how Korpikoski fits into the team plan once the Oilers have finished their offseason makeover; right now this deal looks unnecessary at best and like a step backward at worst.

Things have gone badly.

Korpikoski has been consigned to a depth role, which isn’t ideal for a player at his pricepoint. Worse, whichever line he’s been on has seen its share of total shots fall off precipitously. The following chart, using data from stats.hockeyanalysis.com, does a good job of showing what percentage of shot attempts the Oilers have managed with and without Korpikoski out there:

Teddy Purcell is an extreme case, because he normally played inside the top-six in Edmonton; he’s also spent only just over an hour on the ice with Korpikoski. But the other four forwards do a good job of capturing the Korpikoski effect.

It can be hard, though, to translate those numbers into real meaning to the team, so we’re going to look at them another way. If we take the average hourly on-ice numbers for those four players with and without Korpikoski and project those averages over the ~600 minutes that he’s played this season, we can get a feel for how an average bottom-six line would perform with and without him:

That’s interesting, because we see pretty big gaps in goal and shot numbers.

By puck possession, our bottom-six line is far, far better without Korpikoski. It takes 66 more shot attempts while surrendering 59 fewer; the end result is a 125-shot shift. That’s a lot more time in the right end of the rink and a lot less time in the wrong end of the rink.

By goals, though, we see a very different figure. Our Korpikoski-less line is minus-8; our line with Korpikoski is actually two goals better.

The reason for the discrepancy lies in the percentages. Korpikoski’s numbers aren’t good; the problem is that the totals for everyone else are worse. With Korpikoski on the ice at five-on-five, Edmonton scores on just over five percent of its shots, which is not good. With any of Matt Hendricks, Mark Letestu, Anton Lander or Iiro Pakarinen out there the total is worse, coming in under five percent (and under four percent in Lander’s case).

Some of that stems from the lack of scoring talent in those ranks; I’m also inclined to think that much of it is relatively random chance. Two goals really isn’t much in the grand scheme of things; margins this fine are where “the bounces” tend to dominate.

What’s truly troubling, though, is that our hypothetical bottom-six line gets 125 shot attempts worse. That impacts not just their on-ice numbers but also those of every other line, because the play is going to end in the defensive zone more frequently and thus the next group out will more often start at a disadvantage. Over a longer timeframe, it’s also likely to result in a worse goal differential.

It seems clear that Korpikoski is hurting the team while also taking up a nontrivial amount of cap space.

This is a test for Peter Chiarelli. The new Oilers general manager hasn’t been shy about being rough with players acquired by previous managers, whose faults either real or perceived have had real-world consequences. Trades, waivers and demotions have all been on the table; this summer we’ll see if he’s willing to be equally decisive with regard to his own mistake.

In an ideal world, that would mean a trade, but a trade may not be possible given the money remaining on Korpikoski’s contract.

There’s always the buyout route. Korpikoski has $3.0 million in actual salary owed him next year, meaning it would cost the Oilers $2.0 million in real money to buy him out. If’ I’m reading the CBA correctly, buying out the last year of his backloaded deal would result in a $500,000 cap penalty in 2016-17 and a $1.0 million penalty in 2017-18.

A better solution, though, might just be burying Korpikoski’s deal if a trade is impossible. The first $950,000 of a buried contract doesn’t count against the cap, leaving Edmonton with a $1.55 million cap penalty but only for the single year of 2016-17. If there isn’t a trade out there that makes sense that’s probably the best way to get him off the roster.

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